


In A Funk

by Contemperina



Category: Dangan Ronpa, Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Hinata Waxing Poetic, Super Dangan Ronpa 2 Spoilers, komaeda being komaeda, the hamsters are the most talented of all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-07-29 12:53:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7685389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Contemperina/pseuds/Contemperina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“If you’d allow me to be so bold,” Komaeda says slowly, as if Hinata might hold out a hand and deny him the privilege (he doesn’t), “you don’t seem very much like yourself today.”</p><p>Lying around for hours at a time is actually very characteristic of Hinata—he just usually does so in private, where no one can keep track of him.</p><p>(Takes place at the beginning of Chapter 3)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

On the island, grief can only be indulged if it fits Monokuma’s schedule, which it doesn’t.

The island rakes itself back together after Koizumi’s murder, but it happens too fast. Mere hours following an execution, the students should be locked away in their cottages, anxious and paranoid, but instead they’re making plans to explore the third island, and hopefully there will be a restaurant there too because Souda is _really_ starting to get sick of the diner, and he isn’t the only one, right?

“How couldja be sick of the diner?” Owari asks through a mouthful of rice, the yolk of an egg dripping down her chin.

“How could you not be sick of that greasy pigsty?” Saionji says. “You’d have to be as disgusting as _Tsumiki_ to feel at home there!”

“I don’t—no, I—!”

“Well I like it!” Nidai says, slamming a fist on the table. “Best burger on the island!”

“ _Only_ burger on the island,” Tanaka corrects. He hands one of his hamsters a sunflower seed. “And a truly nauseating one at that.”

“C’mon, man, it’s not that bad,” Souda says.

“If all goes well today,” Sonia cuts in, leaning forward in her seat between them, “then we will be able to share our evening meal somewhere new and exciting, thoughts of burgers far behind us!”

“Rock on! Ibuki _loooves_ new things,” Mioda shouts, gesturing to her mug. “For example: yogoffee. Coffee and yogurt. Who wants to try?” She peddles the drink around while everyone in the room quickly finds somewhere else to look.

After a moment, Nanami sighs and takes it from her. “Not bad,” she says after a small sip. “Hinata?”

He takes the mug, drinks, and forces a smile for Ibuki, which drops into an accusatory scowl as soon as the musician has turned away. Nanami simply shrugs and goes back to her breakfast, grinning mildly to herself.

The chatter picks up again, but it never lands on Koizumi, or Pekoyama, or Togami or Hanamura for that matter, and if it weren’t for the awful obelisk sitting off to one side of the restaurant, Hinata wonders if he could forget—just for a moment—and join the lively discussion unfolding in front of him.

As it stands, though, he knows he’s getting left behind.

He decides to be okay with this when the students around the table begin to stand, filing away to visit the new island, or rest, or whatever they agreed upon while Hinata wasn’t listening. He picks at his plate instead, staring at the monument blankly while the restaurant falls to silence.

He tries to picture the faces of each of the deceased, which is more difficult than he’d like. He tries to remind himself that sitting alone in a restaurant is not the _only_ way to cope, and that surely everyone else is processing in their own way, even if he can’t imagine it.

He tries to imagine it.  

He reaches for his tea after a while, but soon he’s spluttering out yogoffee, swapping mugs with a clatter and throwing the proper one back, slamming it to the table as he blinks at its doppelganger in shock. Mioda’s concoction has grown somehow _worse_ in the time he’s been sitting here, and his cold tea is only a slight improvement.

With a deep exhale, he shifts to stand, but Hinata freezes before the chair can scrape back on the floor. In the far corner of the restaurant, Nagito Komaeda sits alone, his chin in one hand. Hinata follows his gaze and finds that he too is staring at the monument to Koizumi, seemingly lost in thought.

_Or is he?_

Cautiously lowering back into his seat, Hinata gets the sudden feeling that he’s being watched. Impossible, because Komaeda is clearly fixated on the monstrosity by the wall, yet they’ve been sitting for a while—plenty of time for Komaeda to notice that he isn’t alone, even if Hinata _hadn’t_ just dramatically spat yogoffee everywhere. _But just in case…_

Slowly, precisely, Hinata lifts his chair off the ground and moves it back, trying to extricate himself from the seat without drawing Komaeda’s attention. He’s slender enough that this is accomplished without too much maneuvering, but the dishes he’s left behind are a disaster, and he’s standing there wondering how he could possibly tidy them without making a racket, because he’d hate to leave them there, but it would be worse for Komaeda to—

“I couldn’t live with myself if I thought you were holding back to accommodate someone as lowly as me, Hinata.” He tacks the name onto the end, as if there were anyone else to be talking to.

Hinata tenses, eyes fixed on the dishes in front of him. Then, he begins stacking them as loudly as possible. “I’m not.”

“I’m glad,” Komaeda replies. “Because if you aren’t already, I would ask that you pretend I’m not here. I really shouldn’t be, in fact. It’s unthinkable that I’m even allowed in your presence. A talentless commoner, face to face with Hajime Hinata!”

He’s talking wildly with his hands, which makes Hinata nervous. The fact that he’s stood up in excitement, even if there are still a dozen tables between them, makes the feeling worse.

Hinata abandons the dishes and walks stiffly toward the stairs to the lobby, avoiding Komaeda’s eyes the whole way. “I’ll do you one better,” he says, trying to put together a smart phrase about leaving, about not just pretending to ignore Komaeda but being _away_ from him so that neither of them has to worry anymore—but the words don’t come together, so Hinata simply sets off down the staircase.

“An excellent idea, Hinata!” Komaeda praises. “Only an Ultimate could cut so sharply to the point. Perhaps you are the Ultimate Problem-Solver!”

Hinata shudders, gripping the banister a little more tightly. If that were true, Komaeda wouldn’t be on the island. Neither would he, for that matter.

He makes his way to the foot of the stairs and listens carefully, wondering if Komaeda will decide to follow. He doesn’t hear anything over the tones of the arcade machine, but still he stares at the empty landing, holding his breath.

When he finally turns into the lobby, he scolds himself for taking so long. “Hey, Nanami,” he says, walking around to watch as she blasts the way closer to her last high score. She doesn’t respond, or give any indication that she’s noticed him at all, but he wasn’t expecting her to.

Hinata turns away, taking in the state of the room. It looks significantly more…lived in than the last time he was here. The foosball rods are all pulled out to different lengths, and pool balls are scattered over the table, as if the last players quit in a huff, or got interrupted.

It’s more likely they were interrupted, Hinata realizes grimly.

Even the minibar looks a little less neat than he remembers it, like someone examined all the bottles and put them back in the wrong order. Hinata doesn’t think that anyone would risk drinking in this scenario—he can’t even bring himself to buy a Blue Ram out of the vending machine—until he notices that one of the bottles in the back is almost empty.

“That’s one way to cope,” he says under his breath. On a hypothetical level, he thinks he might understand the urge.

Hinata takes a seat on the edge of the pool table to watch Nanami at work, but before long he’s herding balls into pockets and lying down on the table himself, arms tucked behind his head.

He stares at the ceiling fan. It’s a welcome change from the canopy above the bed in his cottage.

As the minutes pass, Hinata begins to wonder what state Kuzuryuu will be in when he returns, if he returns at all. He’ll probably be blind, or paralyzed, or missing his spleen. An easy target.

Hinata groans a little and thumps the back of his head on the table. He shouldn’t be thinking like that, with fifteen days on the countdown and four people already dead.

The game’s sound effects come to an abrupt halt, giving way to a cheery 8-bit tune. He raises his head off the table in time to see Nanami twist around on her stool. “Hinata?” He lowers his head back to the tabletop, more softly this time. “How long have you been there?”

“Fifteen or twenty minutes,” he says. From this angle, he can only see the top of Nanami’s head. It looks concerned. “Fifteen.”

“Oh.”

The conversation ends as quickly as it began. Hinata begins counting the slow rotations of the ceiling fan, and he’s somewhere in the teens when Nanami walks over.

She leans on the table to get a look at Hinata’s face. Her silence might be awkward if Hinata weren’t already used to it.

He decides to round off his count at twenty, then asks, “Did you beat your high score?”

“Nope.”

The soundtrack loops on itself, reminding them both that her game has been left unfinished.

Fighting to ignore the uneasy feeling in his stomach, Hinata attempts to arrange his expression into something pleasant, but that just makes Nanami’s eyebrows pull together further, so he lets it go.

“I’d like to go outside, I think,” she says suddenly, a hand flying to her forehead as she peers over Hinata, to the windows.

“But what about—?”

She takes one more look at him, tightening her backpack on her shoulders, before scooting out the door. Nanami goes more quickly than she does most anything; it’s as if she’s seen her own reflection in Hinata’s stillness and decided she doesn’t like it.

After a while, the arcade game goes quiet, giving up on her return.

Hinata doesn’t particularly like himself this way either, marooned in the lobby, hoping someone will notice him only to feel hassled when they do. The solution, of course, is to end the suspense now and return to his cottage, out of sight, out of mind—but he can’t bring himself to go. He can’t rid himself of the stubborn idea that as long as he’s available, there’s a chance that someone will stumble by and make this day worthwhile.

“Just what the fuck are _you_ doing?”

He should be so lucky.

“Saionji,” he grumbles, turning his head as the door swings closed. She’s barely tall enough to glare at him over the side of the table, but it’s menacing all the same. “I—”

“Don’t bother,” she says. “Another excuse from you would make me want to kill myself.”

Hinata isn’t sure what sort of retort she’s expecting, but when he rolls onto one side and mutters, “Fine,” she follows him around the table like that isn’t enough.

“If you’re going to sleep, you should get on the floor where you belong,” she chirps.

“I’m not sleeping.”

“Oh, yeah, dirt doesn’t sleep.”

Hinata realizes that he should be upset, or at least pretending to be, if he wants Saionji to leave him alone. But he feels nothing, and he wants to do nothing, so ultimately, that’s what he says: nothing.

It’s oddly comforting, in a way. Nothing is an improvement over what’s been going through his head lately.

After a moment, Saionji points at him, bouncing up and down on her toes. “Oh, oh! You know what you remind me of right now?”

Hinata watches her, wondering if she backed him into a corner on purpose or simply has a knack for posing lose-lose questions. He sighs and chooses, “No.”

Saionji stifles a giggle behind one hand. “You look _just_ like Tanaka’s fatass, lazy hamster! But fatter, and lazier. And also ugly.”

_And less talented._

“Tanaka would probably agree with you on that,” he deadpans.

Saionji feigns a gagging sound. “Geez _,_ Hinata,” she says, tugging on her ponytails. “You make rock bottom look sooooo _boring_.”

Hinata narrows his eyes. When it becomes clear that he isn’t going to defend himself, Saionji’s haughty expression quickly evaporates into a pout. Which gives way to sniffling.

And then to tears.

“Waaaaaaaaaaaah! _"_

Hinata winces, noting the pang in his chest, but it isn’t enough to move him from his position on the table because _this_ time, he’s almost positive he hasn’t done anything wrong. “What happened?”

After a mucus-filled snuffle, she chokes out, “It’s like you don’t care what I think of you at all!”

“What?”

“I was _mean_ to you,” she says, managing to look somehow heartbroken and exasperated at the same time, “and you didn’t say _anything!”_

“So you’re _crying?”_

Saionji veers into an even higher octave as she yells, “Don’t make fun of meeeee!”

“Whoa, calm down _,”_ Hinata says, pushing himself up and then hunching back down so he’s closer to her eye level. “I-I’m sorry, I guess. Please stop.”

Saionji hiccups and wipes her nose on her sleeve. “...It’d be easier to stop crying if I had a snack.”

Suddenly, this is all starting to feel very familiar. “Okay,” Hinata says.

Saionji sniffles and tries again, looking up at him through reddened eyes. “So if you’re _really_ sorry, can you go make me something?”

“Saionji...” Hinata says carefully, bracing for impact, “...the restaurant is upstairs. Up _those_ stairs.”

Saionji breaks into a full-blown wail. “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Don’t talk down to me!”

Hinata can’t tell if he’s getting desensitized or is actually as lazy as Saionji said, but he flops back onto the table nonetheless, putting his head on the other end and throwing one arm over his eyes.

Saionji quiets herself almost immediately. Hinata removes his hand and sees her gaping at him in the split-second before her lips curl back in disgust. “Fine. I don’t want your paws on my food anyway, dogbreath!”

Hinata is again struck by how little he actually feels, now that Saionji has blown her cover. Ironically, it’s the happiest he’s felt all day.

“Hmph.” She turns on her heel and stalks away toward the staircase. She’s three steps up when she turns back and spits, “If you’re still here when I get back, I’ll skewer you with Mahiru’s pool cue!”

Hinata doesn’t even bother looking at the rack of cues, watching instead as Saionji stomps the rest of the way up the stairs.

He hadn’t known that Koizumi played pool. He wonders if she was any good and decides that she must have been: the Ultimate Photographer would be keen on angles, and on top of that, Koizumi was never one to do anything poorly.

He imagines her lining up a shot and pictures the way Pekoyama used to fix her braids. Togami reading on a beach chair, and Hanamura fidgeting in the rare moments when he didn’t know what to say. Hinata focuses intently on the mundane, a reminder that these Ultimates, so confident in each of their talents, were also people, with likes and dislikes, habits and hang-ups. Plans for the future that they never got to see.

Hinata thinks that those already passed would prefer to be remembered this way, for whom they were and not _what_ —remembered for all the things that made them human, even if Hinata has already lost the chance to find out what most of those things were.

(This practice also makes it easier for Hinata to believe that he might fit in among the Ultimates himself, even if he can’t remember how. But it’s mostly for the first part.)

As the lunch hour approaches, students begin to filter through the lobby, some showing more concern for Hinata than others. Sonia comes by and wonders if he’s hungry. (“I can prepare you a Sonia specialty!”) Nidai demonstrates a series of exercises he can do to make the most out of his recovery day with such gusto that Hinata is almost tempted to try. Even Tanaka pauses for a moment on his way up the stairs and, seeing Hinata face-down on the pool table, says, “It appears the life essence has finally abandoned your body, _fiend_ ,” which Hinata takes to mean he looks either boring or dead.

In an attempt to look just slightly more animate, Hinata folds his arms in front of him and rests his head there, gazing out the window. Outside, Owari is swimming short laps in the hotel pool, her belongings piled haphazardly on a lounge chair. He watches her absently until Souda and Mioda cut through his sightline on their way out of the restaurant.

_Thonk!_ Hinata twitches as Mioda presses herself up against the glass and begins making faces.

Behind her, Souda looks on helplessly for a second before mouthing, “Ah, screw it,” and crossing back, opening the door and swinging in on the frame. “Hey. You good, man?” he asks after locating Hinata’s figure, spread across the table. “They were, uh—they were talking about you. Upstairs.”

_“Wake up, sleepyhead!”_ Mioda shouts in the direction of the open door before pulling her nose into a snout against the window.

“They were?” Hinata asks, his face lifting. He twists a little to look at him. “Why?”

“Ah, you know,” Souda says, folding his free hand behind his head, “just, uh, you’ve been down here a while, and maybe you’re not, like…” He takes the hand back and holds it awkwardly, like he can’t quite decide what to do with it. Finally, he settles on making air-quotes as he says, “…‘coping’.”

Hinata groans, his pleased expression slipping away. “Maybe this is me coping.”

“That’s what I said!” Souda tells him, stepping further into the room. “This whole thing is bananas, right? We deserve a day off every once in a while.” He sighs, leaning back against the wall. “And I don’t know about you, man, but I’m getting a _little_ tired of always being told what to do—except by Miss Sonia, of course,” he amends, “ _she_ can tell me to do anything she wants...”

Hinata watches Mioda, who has begun drawing shapes into the condensation left by her breath.

“A-anyway,” Souda says, rediscovering his train of thought, “I’m gonna help Mioda boost her amp. Something to do, you know?” He pauses, chuckling nervously. “You aren’t her neighbor, are you?”

“Nope.” Out of curiosity, Hinata reaches for his e-handbook and opens up the map of the cottages. With a start, he realizes that Mioda’s two closest neighbors are already dead.

She draws a skull and crossbones into the window, and it can’t help but feel significant.

“Cool,” Souda says, flashing a thumbs-up. He’s about to close the door behind him when he doubles back. “Hey, uh, Hinata.” He waits until Hinata pulls his eyes from the handbook, then asks, “If you needed anything…you’d say so, right?”

Something in his stomach twists up at that, though he isn’t sure if it’s because Souda’s right or because Souda’s wrong. Regardless, he doesn’t like the idea of contributing to the mechanic’s Code Red levels of anxiety, so Hinata nods and tells him, “I’d say something.”

“Cool,” Souda says again, nodding along. “Okay. See ya.” He closes the door and shouts something to Mioda, who uses two hands to wave at Hinata as she backs away. She nearly falls into the pool behind her, still waving, but Souda catches her wrist and redirects her just in time.

Hinata should laugh, but he’s still caught on the idea of Mioda’s cottage, surrounded by Koizumi and Pekoyama’s empty rooms. What happens to a cottage once the student is gone, the trial complete? Does it get sanitized? Or left exactly as it was, perhaps, or tidied just enough to be respectful without erasing the signs that it was ever lived in?

He resolves to keep his cottage a little neater from now on, just in case, but then buries his face in his arms with a moan. He shouldn’t be planning for his own death. Not like this.

“Is everything all right, Hinata?”

Hinata stiffens. There’s only one person so capable of sneaking up on him, but Hinata doesn’t want to look at him, so he simply doesn’t, and if Komaeda is about to stab him through the heart with a pool cue and pin it all on Saionji, well—this is how he dies. He might even be successful; they’ve all just learned a lot about what it takes to frame the Ultimate Traditional Dancer.

Komaeda would be delighted.

“If you’d allow me to be so bold,” he says slowly, as if Hinata might hold out a hand and deny him the privilege (he doesn’t), “you don’t seem very much like yourself today.”

Lying around for hours at a time is actually very characteristic of Hinata—he just usually does so in private, where no one can keep track of him. He won’t admit this, however, least of all to Komaeda, so he presses his head further into his arms and grunts unhelpfully.

“How long have you been down here?” Komaeda asks gently. It sounds like he’s come closer.

“A while.”

“Since breakfast?”

“Does it matter?”

At that, he gasps. “Of _course_ it matters! As a symbol of hope, everything you _do_ matters,” Komaeda tells him. “And I understand if my well-being doesn’t mean anything to you, but it pains me to see you wasting your wonderful talent on an empty room.”

“What talent,” Hinata mumbles into the table, but Komaeda is already talking too fast to have heard.

“I hope you’ll soon realize that my pitiable existence can be of use to you, Hinata, that you’ll recognize my potential as a stepping stone and use me to rise against despair, shining—!”

Hinata groans, deeply, long enough to drown out Komaeda’s ramblings until they’ve ceased completely. On any other day, he might allow him to go on, listening politely, even arguing with him to point out that for all intents and purposes, Komaeda is as much a symbol of hope as anyone else there. But today, Hinata isn’t in the mood to indulge anyone but himself.

He’s not even in the mood for that, really, but he’s yet to come across a better option.

“Oh.” Komaeda pulls up short. “Have I upset you?” He’s stepped farther away again.

“Yes.”

He chuckles weakly. “Just my luck,” he sighs, the last word lingering on his tongue. “I come to rouse you from this funk, yet I contribute to it instead.”

Hinata fights the urge to bang his head on the table.

“It serves me right,” Komaeda continues, “daring to hope that I could succeed where the others already failed. Me, so disgustingly insignificant, so _putridly_ small!”

When he laughs again, the sound splits the air around them: unhinged and unrestrained.

Hinata can practically hear the mania behind his eyes. It’s the trusted indicator that something is about to go terribly, _terribly_ wrong.

He jolts up, eyes racing around the room. He zeroes in on Komaeda, next to the minibar, a bottle grasped tightly in his hands.

Their eyes meet.

And Komaeda smashes the bottle over his own head.


	2. Chapter 2

It takes a split second for Hinata to realize what’s happened. Another to separate the sound of Komaeda’s scream from his own. He propels himself off the table, as if he has a chance of catching Komaeda before he hits the ground.

Komaeda collapses forward onto all fours as Hinata scrambles down beside him. What’s left of the broken bottle rolls on the floor, and the scent of alcohol floods the room.

“What are you doing?” Hinata screeches, his focus flying between the shards of glass beneath his knees and the blood—the _blood_ that’s seeping its way through Komaeda’s pale hair in a gruesome wave, matting it against his skull.

He should be stopping this. He should be cleaning or stitching or at _least_ assuring him that everything will be alright _,_ but this instinct is drowning at the same rate as Komaeda’s hair.

Nothing involving Komaeda has ever been this straightforward. It would be foolish to start trusting him now.

“Komaeda!”

Footsteps should be thundering down the stairs, helpful hands flinging open the doors and offering guidance, but there’s nothing, an utter lack of response that tells Hinata no one has heard them, even as Komaeda makes noises that land somewhere between cackles and sobs.

He can barely join his thoughts together, but a trial is already playing out behind Hinata’s eyes, the truth bullets stacked up against him: a dozen accounts that he’s been in the lobby all day. Glass in his knees. Komaeda’s blood on his hands as it saturates his feathery hair and begins dripping down his face.

They’re alone. Hinata looks like a murderer.

And there’s a significant chance that this was intentional.

He ducks down to look at Komaeda, choking on the thought, hoping he might instinctually recognize the face of someone trying to get him executed. But all he sees is a boy in front of him, bleeding out, eyes closed, supporting himself on his hands and knees—though his arms are shaking like he can’t make it much longer.

_“What are you doing?”_

Hinata had meant to shout, but he can’t find the muscle. He can only beg, praying that Komaeda had something more in mind when he cut open his own scalp, that this encounter is meant to go beyond him dying on the floor and dooming Hinata out of spite.

Komaeda’s eyes open. It takes him a moment to find Hinata in front of him, but when he does, he smiles widely, distorting the trails of blood that have made it that far down his face.

“I believe this is…” He looks to be on the verge of collapse, yet he holds Hinata’s gaze so resolutely that Hinata feels _he’s_ somehow the one at a disadvantage. “…a job for Tsumiki.”

Komaeda hits the floor. Hinata barely notices—he’s already moving, scooping up the taller boy and slinging him over his shoulder, bursting out the lobby door and running to the pool, saving Komaeda’s life to save his own.

“Owari!” he bellows.

“Hey, couldja maybe hang on until—?” Pulling herself to the edge of the pool, she takes a moment to clear the water from her eyes. Then, she spies the body hanging over Hinata’s shoulder. “What the hell...?”

“Where’s Tsumiki?!”

“Huh?”

“ _Tsumiki_ ,” Hinata repeats. “Dark hair, Ultimate Nurse. _Do you know her?”_

“Well, yeah, but—”

“Then why are you _wasting time?_ Komaeda is—!” He cuts himself off. Dying? Already dead? No, Hinata can hear him whimpering behind him, and it occurs to him that he hasn’t been at all gentle with Komaeda in transport. Carefully, he lowers the body to the ground by the side of the pool. Blood covers Komaeda’s face now, trailed across in a lattice pattern from hanging at too many different angles.

Owari curses under her breath, pulling herself out of the pool.

“He needs Tsumiki,” Hinata says from where he’s kneeling, eyes fixed on Komaeda’s face. “Find her. _Please_.”

Owari nods, slowly at first but speeding up, her resolve strengthening on the spot. “Okay, I'll get her,” she says, stepping into her shoes. “You should prolly stop the bleedin’.” She tosses a beach towel at him, then snatches up her e-handbook and takes off toward the hotel entrance, pulling up the map as she goes.

Balling up the towel in his hands, Hinata gingerly places it against the bloodiest part of Komaeda’s scalp, trying to trick himself into believing he’s done anything remotely like this before.

Hinata presses down, then immediately recoils when Komaeda cries out in pain. “G-glass,” he manages to say, blinking one eye open and looking toward his wound.

“O-oh. Oh, god,” Hinata stammers, setting the towel down and positioning his shaking hands above the bloodied area instead. Without allowing himself too much time to think about it, he begins parting through the strands of hair until he finds it—a chunk of glass lodged in his scalp like an iceberg.

When he removes it, a large knot of hair comes out as well.

Hinata positions the towel once more and, when Komaeda’s ragged breathing stays even, applies pressure. The blood dampens through to Hinata’s fingers, so he balls up the other end and presses that to the wound instead.

 _Komaeda must have known this would happen,_ he thinks, looking down at him. Thin, and frail—there’s no way he could have sustained that blow. The thought raises more questions than it answers.

Hinata loses track of how many times he rotates the towel, but when the hotel gate eventually flies open, it’s nearly soaked through.

“W-what happened?” Tsumiki cries, sprinting toward them. Owari follows behind, having somehow picked up Nidai along the way. They’re both carrying an armload of bags with the mark of the pharmacy and running at full speed.

“I-I don’t know,” Hinata answers, scrambling onto a nearby lounge chair as Tsumiki slides into his place. “It was a bottle, from the minibar. A glass one! And it broke—on his head. He broke it. It’s been bleeding. A lot.” He gestures to the bloody towel, which she’s already reapplied. “I don’t know why. Why he did it, I mean, I know why he’s bleeding...”

Hinata can’t keep up with the words coming out of his mouth, but Tsumiki seems to have understood enough. She turns away, addressing her patient with more confidence in her speech than Hinata’s ever heard. “Komaeda,” she says. He blinks open his eyes, and she briefly examines his pupils. “This is Tsumiki. I’m here to help you. Can you tell me your name?”

“Nagito,” he produces after a moment.

“Good. And do you know where we are?”

“…No,” he says. Tsumiki’s expression is grim until he adds, “But none of us do.”

Hinata latches onto the edge of his deck chair as Komaeda chuckles at his little joke. Owari and Nidai haphazardly dump the medical supplies next to Tsumiki, who begins sifting through them for dressings and gauze.

“I still don’ get why we had to bring all this stuff,” Owari grumbles, shooting a sideways glance at Hinata. “You made this sound way worse.”

“Hmmmmm.” Nidai leans on his knees to get a good look at Komaeda. Then, he straightens. “Agreed! He looks fine to me.”

“B-but he’s bleeding profusely!”

“I’ve taken shits that did more damage!”

Owari slips her usual outfit on over her swimsuit, then props a hand on her hip. “I was bleedin’ like that yesterday,” she says. “Ya don’t see me whining about it.”

“She’s right!” Nidai says, clapping her on the back. “Rub some dirt in it, Tsumiki. This will put some hair on his CHEST!”

“A-aren’t you supposed to be the Ultimate Team Manager...?” Tsumiki says meekly, peeking up at him as she tears off a piece of medical tape. “Shouldn’t you understand how to treat injuries?”

“Part of being Ultimate Team Manager is keeping my athletes injury-free!” he says, pounding a fist to his chest. “I push them as far as they can safely go in every training—BUT NOT FURTHER!!!”

“B-but still...”

Owari’s head snaps up at the idea. “That reminds me!” she shouts, winding up for a punch and rushing at Nidai.

Without hesitation, he ducks down and flips her over his shoulder, throwing her to the ground next to Komaeda.

“Eek! P-please, not next to the patient! I’m sorry!!”

The two of them spar their way to the other side of Hinata’s lounge chair, though this seems more like the natural progression of things than a response to Tsumiki’s request.

For a while, he watches them fight against the backdrop of the cottages. Then, he focuses on Tsumiki’s fingers, cleaning and bandaging and doing all the useful things that hadn’t occurred to him. After that, he listens to Tsumiki’s voice, occasionally asking Komaeda questions just to make sure that he’s still awake. He always is.

Slowly, Hinata regains his breath, and as Tsumiki makes progress, he starts to understand Nidai’s earlier comment. Once you get past the blood, Komaeda looks fine. A little happy, even.

It’s spooky.

With that, it suddenly occurs to Hinata that if he’s not getting charged with murder, he’d very much like to be anywhere but here. “Will—” His voice cracks, tangled by all the screaming, so he clears his throat and tries again. “Will he be okay?”

Tsumiki considers this for a moment. “Y-yes, I’d say so,” she says, looking over her shoulder at him before returning to her work. “His condition is stable, though he’s lost a lot of blood.” Hinata glances at the beach towel discarded beside her and swallows. “But that’s typical of head injuries,” she explains, “and this wound is shallow, actually much more shallow than you’d expect, g-given the circumstances…”

“That’s good?” Owari asks.

Hinata looks over to find that Owari and Nidai have paused their brawl for the time being, presumably to listen to Tsumiki’s explanation. They’re entwined together in some sort of upright grappling position that Hinata can’t begin to describe.

“Oh!—um, yes,” Tsumiki says. “I-it could be—well, it _should_ be much worse. Fatal outcomes aren’t uncommon in these scenarios, but he’s only suffered a minor laceration. He was ver...” She trails off mid-sentence, her hands hesitating over Komaeda. “He was very lucky.”

Hinata’s glad the other students aren’t looking at him right now. It gives him a few extra seconds to wipe this realization from his face before he makes his retreat.

Leaving himself vulnerable all day had been a mistake, Hinata determines, but now that he’s confident Komaeda won’t die, he wants nothing more than to return to his cottage and agonize over the details of this event in private, and for a very long time.

“Whoa!” Nidai booms, separating from Owari and grabbing Hinata’s upper arm as he rushes by. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Hinata freezes mid-step, turning to look at him. “My cottage?”

“Ah, Hinata...this is a little awkward,” Nidai says, rubbing the back of his head with his free hand, “but I have to ask you to stay with us for now.”

He hasn’t released his grip. Hinata’s stomach is beginning to sink, but still he asks, “Why?”

“It’s great that ya saved him and all,” Owari cuts in, arching sideways in a stretch, “but it also _kinda_ looks like you tried to kill him first.”

Nidai doesn’t contradict her, though it looks like he might regret the phrasing. “If you’re a threat, Hinata, we need to—!”

“I’m not a threat,” he interrupts, fighting the urge to struggle his way out of Nidai’s grasp—not that he’d make it very far. “He did this himself! I never left the table, Komaeda just—he grabbed the bottle and broke it and told me to get Tsumiki, so I did. I can’t explain it!”

Owari crosses her arms. “That’s nuts.”

“ _He’s_ nuts! Tsumiki,” Hinata says, gesturing to her with his free hand. It looks like she’s almost finished with her operation. “A little help here?”

“Oh! I—I c-can’t comment on his mental state,” she says, shakily gathering up the scraps of gauze that lie around her. “I’m sorry! Please don’t think less of me!”

Hinata is about to argue, to ask if she’s ever _met_ Komaeda, if she remembers what he tried to do at their party and if it’s really _such_ a stretch to think he might have done this to himself, too, when Tsumiki opens her mouth to speak again.

“H-however,” she begins tentatively, glancing down at her patient, “his wounds were consistent with—um, c-considering the angle and the position, the laceration—it c-could have been…self-inflicted.”

Hinata whips a finger into Nidai’s face, preparing to gloat, but something stops him: a weak chuckle as Komaeda pushes himself up onto his elbows. “It was. Very good, Tsumiki.”

Nidai’s grip on Hinata’s arm finally slackens enough that he can take it back, but he’s too stunned by the simplicity of Komaeda’s confession to bother.

“Y-you should rest,” Tsumiki says, gently pushing Komaeda back toward the ground.

He allows it. “I will, thank you,” he says, polite even as he lies half-conscious on the concrete. “I think I might also like a snack, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

“I’ll get it,” Hinata says quickly, seizing the opportunity to separate himself from this scene, if only for a minute. He finally reclaims his arm and takes off for the restaurant, but Komaeda’s voice calls him back.

“Actually, I would like you to stay. If that’s all right with you, of course.”

Hinata briefly considers what would happen if he _didn’t_ stay, if it _weren’t_ all right, if he ran and hid in the restaurant until they all gave up on him ever coming back. But that, he realizes, would just be more evidence against him: three accounts that he returned to the scene of the crime. Even after Komaeda’s confession, he’s not convinced that the others believe his story—so he turns and walks the few paces back to Komaeda’s side, watching him sourly.

“I-I have some potato chips,” Tsumiki says, reaching into her apron pocket. “Saionji had me buy them, but I g-got the wrong kind...” She looks down at the chips, frowning slightly. “H-here.”

She opens the bag herself and places it down next to Komaeda, who smiles warmly. “Thank you,” he says. “I regret that you have to throw these away on trash like me, but my blood sugar _is_ quite low.”

Tsumiki stammers out the start to a few different replies, but none of them take.

Komaeda crunches a few potato chips in the silence.

“Yo, can I leave?” Owari says abruptly, bouncing from one foot to the other. “I wanna go explorin’!”

“Oh,” Komaeda says, sitting up as if the thought has just occurred to him. Tsumiki allows it this time. “Yes, please do! You’ve already wasted enough of your talent on this useless life of mine. And you as well,” he says, looking to Nidai, then Tsumiki. “I’d be happy if you could simply enjoy what’s left of today.”

Owari turns toward the gate and drops down in preparation for a sprint, but she hesitates when the others don’t join her. “What?” She follows Nidai’s gaze to find him staring at Hinata.

He crosses his arms and looks away.

“I can’t allow infighting on our team!” Nidai declares after a moment, pulling his fists back to accentuate the thought.

Hinata flinches. _“Infighting?”_

“Ah, I see.” Komaeda sighs, looking up at Nidai from his seat on the ground. “You still believe Hinata is the culprit.” Nidai’s eyes shift from Hinata to Komaeda, who goes on. “I assure you, I would not be requesting time with him if my life were in any danger.”

But this claim is so absurd, Hinata can’t help but jump in. “You’re _constantly_ asking us to put your life in danger!”

Komaeda chuckles, quirking an eyebrow. “That was a bit against your own interest, wasn't it?”

He’s right, of course, but pointing out contradictions has become something of a habit for Hinata at this point, and he’s just so _tired_ of things not making sense.

“If Hinata were to kill me now,” Komaeda says plainly, turning back to face Nidai, “it would certainly be despair-inducing, but a crime so obvious could _never_ be a stepping stone for hope. The result would be so lackluster, it would accomplish little to nothing, and given my hypothetical sacrifice, well!—I’m sure you can imagine how...difficult that would be for me.”

“Huuuh?” Owari says, sighing as she flops out of her preparatory position and onto the ground.

“Ah, I’m afraid I’ve gotten ahead of myself again,” Komaeda says, looking down into one of his hands. “I mean only to say that if Hinata had attacked me, I wouldn’t be willing to be alone with him. Yet that’s what I’ve requested.”

Hinata desperately wants to jump in and make a case for himself, to remind the group that it’s his word versus Komaeda’s except they’re both saying the _same thing_ so it shouldn’t even be a topic of discussion—yet the glimmer in Komaeda’s eyes seems to indicate that he has a plan, and the mood around the pool seems to indicate that it’s working.

Hinata bites his tongue.

“So you’re tellin’ me that _Hinata’s_ tellin’ the truth,” Owari says.

“That’s absolutely right,” Komaeda says, beaming at her. “Well done.”

Hinata puts his face in one hand, rubbing the space between his eyebrows as Owari grunts her indifference and sprints away. Tsumiki packs up the remaining medical supplies and leaves for her cottage after giving Komaeda careful instructions for his recovery, while Nidai apologizes for his suspicions (“You can’t be too careful!”) and offers Hinata a handshake, which he barely returns.

With the others gone, Hinata finally takes stock of his situation. It feels like he’s been waiting next to this pool for hours, but the sun has hardly moved. Given the hour, it’s unlikely anyone will come across him and Komaeda here for quite some time.

Hinata walks back around to his lounge chair and drops onto it, taking his head in his hands and pulling it between his knees. He allows it to hang there, thinking about nothing but the feel of blood slowly going to his head as the minutes pass.

When he hears scuffling, he looks back up to find Komaeda taking the chair next to him, shrugging off his coat. “So what will you do now, Hinata?” Komaeda asks casually, reclining back.

Hinata glances at him over the top of the large potted plant that sits between them. Tsumiki did a nice job cleaning off his face, but there’s still a lot of blood in his hair and on his new bandages. Yet somehow, he looks utterly at ease.

It’s infuriating.

“You’re the one who told me to stay here,” Hinata growls, clenching his fists on either side of him. “What do you want?”

“Oh!” Komaeda looks over at him, taken by surprise yet again. “Hinata, I would _never_ demand you degrade yourself, associating with someone as loathsome as me. I only said what I did so the others would feel confident in your innocence.” He holds up a hand as if to wave, eyes crinkling around his smile. “As always, you’re free to do whatever you like.”

“Whatever I’d like, huh,” Hinata repeats, feeling his face begin to flush. “You know what I’d like, Komaeda? I’d like to know what the _fuck_ happened back there.” He jerks his head toward the lobby. “Were you trying to get us both killed? Was that your plan? Or was _this_ your plan?” he asks, gesturing back to the state of Komaeda’s bloodied head. “In which case, what the hell were you trying to accomplish?!”

The question doesn’t seem to register, so Hinata continues, growing louder with every word. “Is it not enough for you that four people are _dead?_ And that you helped kill two of them?! Because _I’m_ having a hard time dealing with that, and I don’t need you _terrorizing_ me on my day off!”

For the first time that day, worry creeps into Komaeda's expression. “I see.”

“I was trying to remember them! I was getting through this the only way I know how,” Hinata says, his anger beginning to turn into something more fragile. “And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe everyone else is right to move on, because we barely knew them and there’s still _so much_ we don’t understand, but I can’t just forget these people who died for some sick game we know nothing about!”

He pulls his legs onto the lounge chair and moves so he can sit back in it himself. This way, he can pretend he’s looking out at the pool instead of just avoiding Komaeda’s stare. “I just... I just couldn’t leave. I... It didn’t feel right.”

For a while, Komaeda is still. When he does speak, his voice is kind. It’s the same voice that welcomed Hinata to the island however many days ago, the same voice that made him feel so inexplicably whole as everything else fell apart. “Hinata, do you know what you just described?” he asks.

“More than I should’ve, probably,” Hinata says in reply, beginning to realize (and regret) exactly how many cards he just laid out on the table.

“No, not at all. Hinata...” Komaeda pauses dramatically. “You were in _despair_.”

Hinata turns sharply to meet his gaze, only to find he’s staring dreamily into the blue sky.

“And that’s...well, it’s wonderful news,” Komaeda continues, laughing happily. “You only needed a reason to act, a reason to _hope_ , and that’s what I gave you! You see, I was your stepping stone!”

Hinata leans forward out of the recline, gripping the arms of his chair until his knuckles go white. “You think you _helped_ me?” he asks, waiting for the moment Komaeda that looks at him, just so he can see the disgust written into each of Hinata’s features—but he never does. “You broke a bottle on _your own head_ so that I’d have something to _do?”_

“Well, it was a little more complicated than that.”

“So explain it!”

Komaeda finally turns to him, gesturing excitedly, and he doesn’t seem at all deterred by the contempt on Hinata’s face. “You were despairing, Hinata,” he says. “It was talked about at lunch, how you’d been lying around, how distressed everyone thought you were. And naturally, I hoped that one of the others would inspire you to action, magnificently talented as they are, but they didn’t, so I made my own attempt!”

“You could have died! You _should_ have died.”

“I’ve said it before,” Komaeda reminds him, “my life is a small price to pay, so long as my death paves the way to hope.” He smiles, touching his bandages lightly. “Though I will admit, I had a feeling my so-called ‘talent’ would allow me to emerge from this whole ordeal relatively...unscathed.”

“You knew exactly what you were doing, then,” Hinata says, more to himself than to the boy next to him. “You knew...”

What? That Hinata might have let him die, had his life not been on the line as well? That Hinata might have laid on that pool table for days, had Komaeda not given him a reason to get up?

Hinata can’t say either of these things out loud, so he lets the words hang.

“I had certainly hoped things would turn out this way,” Komaeda says, answering Hinata’s unfinished thought.

“God.” Hinata replays the day in his mind, start to finish. He’d been manipulated, _completely_. Komaeda had predicted his every move and crafted a plan not around Hinata’s altruistic nature or anything _positive_ but around Hinata’s selfish desire to stay alive. Not even that—around Hinata’s crippling inability to make a decision, which had left him vulnerable to any suggestion Komaeda gave.

Komaeda could have told him to do anything, in those moments of initial panic. Hinata would have obeyed without a second thought.

“Do you know what it’s like to be around you?” he asks suddenly, before he can change his mind.

Komaeda turns to him, eyebrows raised, and shakes his head.

“I don’t feel safe. No one does,” Hinata tells him, finally spitting out the thoughts that have been twisting around in his head since the first trial. “I don’t feel safe when you’re around, but I don’t feel safe when you’re gone, either, because I’m afraid you’re doing something exactly like what you _just did_. You think you’re spreading hope, Komaeda, but you’re not!—you’re spreading _fear_. Is there really something so wrong with you that you can’t see what you do to me? To _everyone?”_

Komaeda continues to watch him with that same curious expression. Hinata glares back until finally, the boy turns his head and looks out over the pool. “Perhaps,” he says quietly, pulling his coat back around him.

Hinata blinks. “...I—I’m sorry, I didn’t—” he stammers, before he knows what he means to say.

“Or,” Komaeda interrupts, “you could simply be mixing up fear and despair.” A bright smile replaces his wistful expression in the blink of an eye. “You probably haven’t spent as much time thinking about their nuances as I have—why would you, when you have such pressing things to attend to?—but despair is the darkness in which hope shines, so for you to tell me that I spread despair, well... You’ve actually given me quite the compliment!” He presses a hand to his heart and bows slightly. “Thank you, Hinata.”

 _“No.”_ Hinata knocks back his head in frustration and asks himself what comes next. Komaeda has answered all of his questions. Hinata has made an attempt to bring him back to reality and, it appears, strengthened his resolve to spread chaos instead.

Perhaps there’s nowhere left for them to go. Maybe it’s better that they separate now, before one of them says something to ruin this fragile, mutual awareness they’ve just found.

“I should go,” Hinata says, standing up and straightening out his shirt. Even without a mirror, he can sense that he looks like a mess. “Take care of that, okay?” he says, gesturing in the general direction of Komaeda’s head wound.

“Oh, I will,” Komaeda assures him. “Tsumiki gave most excellent instructions.”

Hinata nods and makes his way off the pool tiles, pausing only when Komaeda calls out to him.

“Hinata?”

Komaeda has turned around in his chair to peer at him over the top of it, eyes bright. He hesitates slightly, then asks, “What will you do now?”

Hinata considers this for a moment. “Explore the new island, I guess.” He’ll have to be quick about it if he wants to make it back in time to meet everyone for dinner—which he does. Depending on how the search goes, he might even have a few things to contribute to the evening discussion. But even if he doesn't, Hinata thinks he might enjoy the company.

Komaeda smiles at him again, so clearly delighted that Hinata almost returns the expression. When he turns away, Komaeda does the same, wiggling down into his chair as Hinata breaks into a run.

“I’m glad.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hinata does not know how to treat head wounds. Please do not ever do anything that he did.
> 
> \-- 
> 
> Thank you for reading! This was my first Danganronpa fic, so I feel very fortunate to have received some positive feedback (and thoughtful criticism)! If anything felt strange or unclear to you as you were reading, please don't hesitate to say so. And of course, I'd be as delighted as Komaeda to hear your thoughts in general. 
> 
> Thanks again--I hope you enjoyed!


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